Officer disciplined over racist shooting threats
An officer who told a black man “you’d be the first one I’d shoot” has been handed a final written warning.
Video footage circulated online last September showing a West Midlands Police (WMP) officer threatening a man during a search and mocking the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found the officer had a case to answer for misconduct due to his “offensive and racist” language, and he was found guilty at a misconduct meeting last month.
The officer has apologised for his comments, stating he did not mean to appear racist, offensive or threatening.
IOPC regional director Derrick Campbell said: “We are conscious of the impact on public confidence in policing such an incident can have.
“The remarks made were inappropriate and the officer who made them has been sanctioned accordingly after the force agreed with the findings of our investigation.”
The footage, captured on a mobile phone, appears to show WMP officers searching an address in Coventry in August 2017.
One unnamed officer asks a man why he failed to answer the door to them.
The man replied that he did not know who they were and had seen them “climbing up the window like thieves”, adding: “Police? That’s even worse [than thieves]. I’ve been seeing all kinds of videos, I have.”
The officer then jokingly asked him “you’re going to go Black Lives Matter on us, are you?” and said “you would be the first one I would shoot if I had a gun”.
WMP removed the officer from frontline duties once the video emerged and referred the incident to the IOPC.
A second officer received management action after WMP agreed he had a case to answer for misconduct for not challenging his colleague’s actions.
No evidence was found that the other two officers involved had overheard the comments.
Chief Inspector Yvonne Bruton, from the force’s professional standards department, said: “It is important to WMP that the public have full confidence in our officers who are expected to be sensitive to the needs of the diverse communities we serve.
“The officer in question got it wrong on this occasion and has apologised for his actions.”